Jorito

Makes total sense, as you can literally buy 4-5 of them for the price of a single a7x

Not quite, Neifion was talking about the HS7, the one with the 7" woofers (the HS8 has 8" woofers).

1) Yep, pretty much. Larry (Liontamer, OCR Staff) explains it in the thread you linked at 3) too. 2) The missing tracks are not lost or badly numbered, they were removed, for various reasons. You can find which tracks and why here: https://ocremix.org/info/ReMix_Changelog 3) Reading that, it's the other way around: any tracks from the torrent that are also on an album will have the OCR album name (e.g. "Resonance of the Pure Land" tagged within them. In my experience, the album usually gets released first, and tracks get posted on OCR afterwards, so the other way around doesn't make much sense to me.

Something to keep in mind is that album songs will only appear here on OCReMix if the artist submits them to the panel. Not every artist does that, and some tracks that are submitted might not pass the panel and hence not end up on the site.

I have the JBL LSR’s and had the Yamaha HS5 before. While the Yamaha had better built quality (it’s hefty), they are also very top heavy and lack bass. I didn’t care for the sound much, not to listen to, not to mix on. The JBL’s sound a lot nicer to my ears, also great for normal listening, and for me they seem to translate pretty well. I did plug the sound holes on the back because they are close to the wall and would sound boomey otherwise. From a bang for the buck perspective I would recommend to check them out to. Caveat: I do like 95% of my mixing on headphones.

As the 'organ donor' (heh, couldn't resist) to this track, I very much appreciate the feedback, many thanks!

Looking at the string part, it seems you are using the violins more as a pad type instrument rather than in an orchestral setting (I would have expected the parts to be spread out more across octaves for orchestral strings, if you're talking basses, celli, violas and violins 1 & 2). Also, looking at the specific notes you used, it seems that the violins are more of a background part here rather than something that needs to be on the foreground. There's probably no harm in just changing the strings to another octave (lower, probably), from what I can see. Maybe ACO has additional insights too.

For question 1: make sure to bring down the level of ALL your tracks. You can always bring them up later with mastering/a limiter if needed, but especially for the kind of sound you're going for, you probably don't want to squash the life out of it with heavy compression. For me, it's not uncommon to have my individual tracks set to somewhere between -4 and -15db, depending on the type of sound, and Bitwig will out of the box set the default level of a track to -10db whenever you create a new track (very convenient, a pity not all DAWs do this). Digital clipping is something you will want to avoid, because things will start sounding bad. With regards to question 2, that's something you can either fix in your orchestration (what instruments play what parts in what range) or try to patch up with mixing. I'd try to fix it in your orchestration first by either playing the violins an octave higher or lower, or playing the piano in a higher or lower octave, and see how that goes. In real life instruments, this will also affect the tone (timbre) of the instruments, which may or may not fit your track. Hard to tell without hearing it If you are really dead set on keeping them in the same octave, then you can try to patch things up in your mix. Panning the strings and piano so they are not in each others' way can be a big help, and applying an EQ to them to cut away the parts of the sound you don't need and make the instruments more distinctive and separate is also something to consider. And check the volumes of course; if the piano is so loud that it drowns out the violins that you deem important, then the piano is probably too loud and simply needs a volume reduction. Lastly, if you can't really hear some of the background parts and if you mute them you don't notice anything different, it might be a good idea to cut them. It's not something I'm good at (yet) but it can be a big help in getting clarity in your mix.

Sure, I can do some critical listening.

I have these headphones and I run them directly connected to my soundcard (NI Komplete Audio 6), no headphone amp. While it doesn't go that loud (but still at a comfortably loud enough level), it works great for my music creation things. Not going too loud might actually be a benefit, because you won't damage your ears that way. $0.02. So, no, I don't think you'd need an amp, it's usable without one. You could always get a headphone amp later though, if you so wish.

Just wanted to add that having a good sound library is something that not only greatly helps inspire you, it also makes your life easier, because you have to work less hard to make it sound good. Consider it like an investment and use it to learn and hone your skills, rather than boring and depressing yourself with things that don’t inspire you. I probably have too much stuff in mine, but I accumulated it over the years. I remember buying Komplete years ago and thinking it was a lot of money. Turns out I did and do use it a lot, still, and I definitely got my money’s worth out of it. And I don’t even use all of it. So yeah, mine is a bit of a contrast with Rozo’s post above, I probably have too much stuff, I didn’t learn a lot of it in-depth, I mostly stick to presets, but it’s very comforting to know that I have a varied and good quality sound palette that inspires me and is able to get the job done. As for point 4: do what you love and figure out the related stuff as you go along. For me, I like arranging the most, but as my skills grew, I also sort-of out of necessity had to pick up related skills like EQ-ing, mixing, mastering, etc. Just because I want to make every track better than the previous one, and you learn something from every track you do. The more you learn, the more you learn about things you don’t know yet, too. It can be overwhelming at times, but on the other hand: try to just dive into something and look back after a few months. Chances are you will be like ‘wow, did I learn all of that?’ and can be proud of what you learned rather than being paralyzed about stuff you didn’t learn yet.

In my experience, working with other people does indeed involve waiting, and sometimes that can get a bit frustrating. But there’s another side to it to, or at least for me: being able to work with other people does make it more enjoyable, social and educational. Depending on your individual needs and desires that may or may not be something that interests everybody, but I’ve learned bits and bobs from everybody I worked with, and that is totally worth it for me. But YMMV of course; just wanted to mention another side of it.

Fair point; the opening post was clear about that, but the tone of his follow-up felt was stated less subjective to me. Guess that’s what triggered me.

This seems totally counterintuitive and -dare I say- wrong to me. Melody is the main attraction, the thing that gets people hooked. It's the vision of what the song (or in your analogy, house) should look like. All the rest is just there to support it. No use in building walls and foundations just to figure out you need to tear it down again because it doesn't work with the final vision (in your analogy, you built a too short foundation, the walls are all lopsided and the body of the house looks like a nightmare out of H.R. Giger's brain). Doesn't make any sense for buildings, doesn't make sense for music - ask any architect or composer worth their salt. Your argument that it's easier to move around a few notes in the melody rather than in all the chords and accompaniment sounds as if you feel melody is there support the chords and accompaniment rather than the other way around. That sounds very strange to me, but meh, it's your music, you can do what your want. Just don't present it as univeral truth.

(As I already told you) I rather like this. It nicely hits that sweet spot where the soundscape is in-between chiptune and the original lo-fi mod sounds. Lots of interesting details in the background going on to keep stuff moving forward, too. Wasn't really feeling the ending, but that might be just me.